Mailing lists¶
We provide mailing lists on lists.phys.ethz.ch.
Typical Tasks¶
Create/Delete mailing list¶
If you would like to have a mailing list for your group, please contact us. Please also let us know if you no longer need an existing mailing list and want us to delete it.
Login¶
Most users can log in with their D-PHYS account via Authentik, as explained on the Sign In page. Alternatively, in particular for public mailing lists, users can create a local mailman account, that does not require a D-PHYS account.
Always make sure that your local mailman account has a strong and unique password. All accounts are strictly personal. Even if someone else needs access to a mailing list, you never need to share any password! Simply add his/her email as additional owner of the list.
Subscribe to a mailing list¶
Most of our mailing lists are not meant to be subscribed by individuals. Instead their members are managed by the mailing list owners. If you nevertheless want to send a subscription request, feel free to log in and subscribe to a given mailing list. In most cases you will have to wait for the owner to accept your request of membership.
Similarly, if you want to unsubscribe from a mailing list, you need to first log in, or directly contact the mailing list owner.
Other Tasks¶
Terminology¶
Some terms used on the lists.phys.ethz.ch web page may require an explanation.
Mailman, Postorius, Hyperkitty¶
Mailman is the name of the open-source software we use to host mailing lists. It's divided into several components with individual names and icons.
- Postorius is the web interface to the core mailing list functionalities, like configuration, membership management and moderation of incoming messages.
- Hyperkitty is the archive of all previous messages sent to the mailing list.
Owners, moderators, administrators, members, non-members¶
- Owners have full admin rights on a mailing list. They can change the settings, manage members and moderate new messages.
- Moderators have restricted rights on a mailing list and can only moderate new messages. We typically avoid moderators and configure full owners instead.
- Administrators are the people that are either owner or moderator of a mailing list.
- Members are the people that have been subscribed to a mailing list and receive its messages.
- Non-members are the people that require some special settings, without necessarily being a member of the mailing list. The typical example is to allow someone to send messages, without being moderated.
Accept, Discard, Ban, Reject¶
A mailing list administrator may receive notifications about pending subscription requests or held messages waiting for approval. Such requests can be responded with different actions.
- Accept: allow the request
- Discard: refuse the request, but without notifying the sender. Spam messages should always be discarded, to prevent sending out even more unwanted messages to often faked senders.
- Ban: refuse the request and dis-allow the sender from future requests. This should be avoided, as the spamming address is usually used only once and better rejected centrally on our mail server.
- Reject: refuse the request and inform the sender with an optional rejection reason. Only useful if the sender is an actual person.